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A WOMAN WITH A HOBBY

A Short Story By: Atoda Takashi

Translated by: Gavin Frew.

"It is quite acceptable in other countries to leave flowers at a stranger's funeral, you know. When I was living in France, I often saw ladies doing it at the local cemetery."

If anyone had asked her about her strange 'hobby', Kyoko Noguchi was sure to have come out with some answer like that, although none of her neighbors knew if she had really lived abroad or not. She had come to live in the Akatsuki apartment block with her young brother several years earlier, but she kept very much to herself and apart from a few delivery boys, nobody ever came to her door.

Apparently she worked in a laboratory or library or something and paid for her brother to go to university out of her wages. Her brother was a rather weak looking boy and was so quiet that no one could ever tell if he was at home or not.

"When I consider what I went through when my fiance died, I cannot think of them as strangers."

That was what she had said at the florist's one time as she bought a bouquet of flowers, but nobody knew if she had ever been engaged and if she had, whether she had lost her fiance in such a dramatic fashion.

The other housewives in the apartment block all thought her a little strange, although they respected her for the way she looked after her brother. She was about forty years old, but cut her hair short and always wore a pale pink dress so that from a distance, she looked much younger. However, if you were to bump into her in the elevator, you could see the crow's feet in the corner of her eyes and the wrinkles under her makeup and the overall effect was rather grotesque.

"I wonder if she has a boyfriend?"

"With a face like that?"

"But they do say that ugly women are more affectionate..."

There was some talk of this type, but not very much. They say that when people stop spreading rumors about a woman, her looks are gone, and Kyoko's were definitely on their way out.

She kept very much to herself and except for the times that she happened pass a group of housewives gossiping by the lifts, most of her neighbors forgot about her existence entirely. The walls of the building were very thick and they ensured that nothing of her private life leaked out into general knowledge. For this reason, nobody could say for sure just when she started her 'hobby', in fact nobody was even aware that she had a hobby at all, not even her young brother who lived with her.

One fine day in October, the laundryman met her in the corridor. She was dressed entirely in black.

'It is unusual for her to dress like that,' he thought to himself, but then he realized why. It was a little after ten which was too late for her to be going to work and she was carrying a large bouquet of chrysanthemums.

'One of her friends must have passed away,' he thought.

Her eyes were sunken with dark shadows under them and she looked as if she had been up all night at a wake.

"Good morning," he said.

"I have nothing for you today," she replied brusquely and hurried on.

Once out of the building, she headed straight for the bus stop and waited impatiently until she noticed an empty cab and hailed it.

"The main junction with 'S' Street, please."

The driver did not say a word, and Kyoko also remained silent for the rest of the journey, clutching the bouquet close to her. After about ten minutes, just as they were approaching 'S' Street, she said;

"This will do fine, thank you."

The taxi stopped by a small alley leading off the main road to the residential area. There was a poster with a black border pasted on to a telegraph pole showing a picture of a hand pointing down the alleyway and the name, 'YAMAUCHI' written underneath. She glanced over at the sign briefly, but seemed to know her way without relying on its directions and hurried down the alley.

After she had walked for a few minutes she saw several giant floral wreaths and the black and white awnings that are used to decorate a house for a funeral, blowing gently in the wind. She stood at the front gate and waited for a moment. Inside, it would appear that the chanting of the sutras for the departed had just finished.

The awnings had been erected in the tiny garden to create a aisle from the back gate for the mourners to come and pay their last respects and there were still two or three latecomers waiting their turn to offer up incense. Kyoko did not join them however, but went around to the front door. She paused for a moment, then taking off her shoes, she walked indoors.

The air was full of the smell of incense and flowers and a young man in jeans stood in front of the altar that had been constructed in the main room.

"Okay, if everyone is ready, we will carry the coffin out now."

While undertakers are always very quiet and courteous, they are very efficient and manage get things done very quickly. The man disappeared behind the altar and after moving the flowers and offerings, he said;

"I am very sorry, but could I ask two or three men to help me?"

They carried the coffin out to the verandah by the garden and the man opened the lid. Inside, an old woman with a sunken mouth lay with her arms crossed awkwardly over her chest.

"If you would like to make your last farewells now."

Urged on by the undertaker's words, the family moved toward the coffin in twos and threes.

"Grandma..."

A young girl knelt down and leaned over the open lid, a tear falling from her cheek to land on the dead woman's white robes. Women could be heard sobbing sadly here and there and the coffin soon became a mass of chrysanthemums as each person placed a final offering inside.

The men looked on with solemn expressions, although it would be a lie to say that they did not find the whole procedure rather fascinating.

"If everyone is ready..."

The undertaker looked around and suddenly Kyoko appeared beside the coffin, blinking back the tears that welled in her eyes.

"I will always remain indebted to you..."

She spoke in a low whisper, but several of the surrounding people were all able to hear what she said. She lay the bouquet at the dead woman's feet and stepped back.

"If that is all, the family can now hammer the nails."

The undertaker closed the lid mercilessly and started to hammer in the first nail with a rock.

Clack... clack... clack...

Although none of them knew the significance of the custom, the family all stepped forward to grip the rock and hammer on the nail. When this ceremony had finished, the undertaker stepped forward with a hammer and drove in the other nails in a professional way.

Tap... tap... tap...

"Now, if I could ask for your assistance once again..."

Four men in black suits carried the coffin out to the hearse and the crowd followed it through the gate. As they went, a voice could be heard on the verandah.

"Do you know what happened to the pile of offerings that were left here?"

"No, I have no idea."

It was a couple wearing mourning attire and Kyoko hurried past them, her head bowed, as she headed for the entranceway.

When she got outside, the coffin was already in the hearse and the mourners were lined the length of the road.

A man in a dark grey suit pushed his way through the crowd, but when he realized that the funeral had finished, he stopped and looked around suspiciously.

A funeral is a strange occasion. All the mourners will have known the deceased, but this does not necessarily mean that they knew each other. For this reason, nobody would think it odd to see a stranger clasping their hands in prayer, they would just assume that they all had their own reasons for coming to pay their last respects.

In a person's life, they meet so many people that only they can know who they are or why they should want to come to the funeral. Looking through the list of callers, many a close relative may be heard to say, "I wonder who this person was," but in most cases, they will never find out.

In the case of the Yamauchi funeral, the old lady had been bedridden for several years and had hardly met a sole. Even before her illness, she had been very retiring and had a very limited social life, but if one were to go back to when she was young, she had been overseas with the army as a nurse during the war and after that, she had worked as a matron in a large hospital so there must have been countless times when she had done some service for someone. Even though the funeral was a small, thrifty affair, there was no reason why some of her old acquaintances might not have heard of it and come to pay their last respects. At least that is what the family thought.

Kyoko watched the extravagantly decorated hearse disappear and then turned and hurried away. She got to the bus stop just as a bus arrived and she hopped on.

She got off again when the bus arrived at the city center. There was a tailor, a record shop, a baker, a fruit parlor and an eel shop. There was a new pachinko shop on the corner with a loud speaker outside to attract custom and the noise it made was quite deafening.

On the pavement next to the bank someone had a stall selling posters and next to that was young, suntanned man with pile of stuffed animals lying in front of him.

"How about a cuddly toy for the kids? How about it?" He asked the passersby in a half-hearted fashion.

Kyoko stopped in front of the stall. She had really meant to go to the department store a bit further down the street, but if he had what she wanted here, all the better.

"How about one for your child, ma'am?"

"Mmm..."

"It's only a third of the price of the department store."

"Mmm..."

Kyoko picked up a crocodile and looked at it. It was the type that people put on the back seat of a car to use as a cushion.

"Mr. Crocodile? That's a good one, it will cheer up your son at home."

The vendor guessed that she was a mother who had left her son at home while she had gone to a funeral and that she wanted to buy a doll to make it up to him.

Mr. Crocodile looked up at her with his big, sad eyes.

Kyoko looked at it for a few minutes then dropped it back on the plastic sheet. Next she picked up a stuffed turtle.

"Do children like turtles?"

"Of course, they are one of the top favorites. There is the famous story about the sea princess and her turtle and then there are all the television cartoons..."

However, there is something grotesque about reptiles and they are not so popular with grown-ups. It would be stupid if someone were to object to it.

"How much is that Giraffe?"

It's neck was a bit thick, but it was a really cute, cuddly doll.

"Two thousand yen, but I'll let you have it for one thousand eight hundred."

Kyoko tucked it under her arm. It's head peered out over her shoulder.

"I'll give you fifteen hundred."

"Are you trying to ruin me? I'll be making a loss. I tell you what I will do, as you are so good-looking, I will give it to you for the same price I paid _ sixteen hundred."

"Okay, wrap it up," she answered in a curt tone.

Carrying the parcel under her arm, she crossed the street and queued up for a bus home.

"I wonder if the crocodile wouldn't have been better?" She murmured to herself.

The black and white awnings had been stretched from the front wall to the garden shed to try and hide the untidy garden, but one wheel of a small child's tricycle still poked out into view.

The street was lined with young housewives, standing in tears and their children, who were around five or six years old, stood looking from one to the other inquisitively. All that is except for one little girl who stood solemnly, dabbing her eyes with her handkerchief in imitation of her mother.

There was a sign on a bamboo screen at the main entrance to the small prefab house.

In Mourning For Noboru Ichioka, six years old...

"They say that the truck suddenly swung around the corner without stopping..." One of the onlookers said, her eyes clouding with tears.

"It's hard to believe, isn't it? He was with his father at the time, wasn't he?"

"Yes, his father had taken him with him to the golf driving range, but he had got bored and slipped out to play."

"It must be very hard for the poor man to bear."

"Yes, really..."

"I saw him crying just now."

Outside the front gate there was a small reception desk and two large floral wreaths one with signs to show that one was from the Farmers' Cooperative and the other from the Agricultural Society.

The father was most likely an office worker employed by one of these organizations and at weekends he enjoyed going to the practice range to play golf. There must be a million others like him.

A man in a dark grey suit stood under one of the wreathes, listening to the women's conversations and trying to stifle a slight yawn. One of the mourners arrived late and hurried up to the reception desk to make a small monetary offering.

Suddenly, a loud wail came from the direction of the house.

The women waiting in the street all craned their necks to try and see what had happened and the children crawled through the hedge into the garden.

A small coffin lay on the verandah of the house, its lid open to the afternoon sun.

"Noboru... Noboru!"

The mother pressed her gaunt cheek to the child's cold one. The little head was swathed in bandages and only one eye could be seen.

Bunches of white and yellow chrysanthemums were placed in the coffin one after the other. The undertaker was an unusually young man and he stood with his back to the coffin looking out at the peaceful autumn sky as if he did not know what was going on behind him. When the crying had subsided a little, he said;

"If you are ready, I would like to close the coffin now."

At that moment, a woman with a stuffed giraffe under one arm stepped up to the foot of the coffin.

"You were such a good friend at nursery school..." Her voice was choked with emotion.

The child's plump father was standing to one side, supporting his wife and when he heard these words, he looked up at the woman.

"Take this with you," the woman said and laid the giraffe in the coffin by the child's side. The father gave her a small bow in silent gratitude.

The lid closed with a squeak, shutting of the child and giraffe from view.

Clack... Clack... Clack...

"If you have all finished..? Then please excuse me."

Tap... Tap... Tap...

The preparations were soon completed and the undertaker and father picked the coffin up between them. The woman went and put on her shoes at the front door, then followed the coffin out of the gate. Her eyes met those of the man in the dark grey suit and she hurried away, watching him out of the corner of her eye.

The man watched her with sleepy eyes as she disappeared down the street, then he turned suddenly and hurried over to stand next to the reception desk.

"Hey Gen!"

The man was busy playing a pachinko machine, but upon hearing his name he turned around. He was still wearing the same dark grey suit and had the same sleepy expression.

"Oh, it's you, is it, Gyoro?"

'Gyoro' means bug-eyed in Japanese and it was easy to see where his nick-name came from. He glared around fiercely as if challenging the world.

"You shouldn't be hanging around here, you know, it isn't allowed." Gyoro said with a laugh. His eyes softened and it was easy to tell that he was probably a very friendly man underneath his tough exterior.

"You're right, I am still on duty. Are you heading back now?"

"Yeah."

"Hang on, we can go together. I am out of balls anyway."

"You will never win anything in this shop."

"I know."

Gen flicked his last ball and walked away without waiting to see where it went.

One of the shop's employees, a bit of a gangster type, was standing by the exit, and when he saw them coming towards him, he gave a start and bowed deeply. They ignored him, however and walked on out of the shop.

"What are you working on at the moment?" Gen asked.

"There is nothing much going on at the moment."

"That can't be bad."

"Yeah, it gives us a chance to get on with our homework."

"Homework?"

"Yeah, old cases. You remember that rape and murder case we never managed to clear up?"

"What, that one last year?"

"That's the one."

"You homicide guys never give up, do you?"

"Well, it is a bit different from robbery. What are you on anyway?"

Gen fingered his twisted black tie and made a wry face.

"Funeral robberies."

It was not exactly a glamorous case.

"Is there a lot of it?"

"Yeah, quite a lot. There is not that much money involved but they make a fair living by it. The problem is that there are so many funerals around that we can never tell where they are going to turn up next."

"So that explains the black tie."

"Yes, I spend all my time at funerals these days.

"You'll be turning into a monk at this rate."

"Leave it... Say, do you think that there is anyone who enjoys funerals?"

"Well, there are the undertakers and priests."

"Mmm... Maybe 'enjoy' was not the right word. Perhaps they feel that if they attend enough funerals while they are in this world, things will go better for them in the next."

"I have never heard of that."

"I keep meeting the same woman at funerals all over the place."

"What? It is not like you, she must be the robber you have been looking for."

"I thought so too, at first, but she never slips up and I can't work out how she does it."

They walked down a shopping arcade until they came to a junction. The sun in the western sky threw long shadows behind them. Suddenly Gen stiffened like a hound that has just found a scent.

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing, go on without me."

The man in the dark grey suit crossed the junction without looking back. He had noticed the woman walking into a department store and followed close behind. Gyoro stood and watched him, a thoughtful expression on his face.

'There is something strange about her.' Gen thought as he ran after the woman and tried to remember all the times he had seen her.

First had been at that old woman's funeral, Yamauchi or some such name, where the offerings had all been stolen. That afternoon, she had appeared at the funeral of the kid who had been hit by a truck. The money had not been stolen there, but then he had been on guard from the beginning. The next day, there had been the liquor shop owner's funeral, the ex-headmaster's, the wife of the office worker who died of cancer, the railway worker who had committed suicide and the banker's mother...

These last three or four days, she had turned up at every funeral he had attended. She always wore too much make-up and had those weird eyes... She was wearing a pink dress now, but there was no mistaking her.

There had only been robberies at two of the funerals she had attended, but that may be because she had realized the police were watching her. She looked like a well brought-up spinster and while he could not visualize her actually stealing the money herself, it occurred to him that she might be decoy to attract his attention while someone else made the heist.

He caught up with her at the entrance to the department store and followed her up to the information desk.

"Where is the sports department, please?"

"If you take the escalator up to the sixth floor, you will find it on your right."

The man in the dark grey suit followed three or four yards behind, but she never turned back.

'She looks like a typical spinster to me,' he thought. 'She must be a little weak in the head to go around dressed in a bright pink dress like that at her age and although she might do a bit a shoplifting when she has her period or might turn violent if she were spurned in love, I cannot see her stealing funeral offerings for a living.'

He shook his head in disbelief.

They soon arrived at the sports department, but it was a bit too quiet and open for his liking so he stood to one side and watched her from a distance. She did nothing to attract his suspicion.

"Thank you very much."

She received a flat paper parcel from the assistant and making her way out of the department store she headed straight to a bus stop without glancing back for a moment.

'She cannot go to a funeral dressed like that, anyway, there aren't any scheduled for today so she must be going home,' the man thought, but continued to follow her anyway.

She got off the bus and disappeared inside the Akatsuki apartment block. The man asked the neighbors about her, but all he learned was that 'she looks after her brother well,' or 'she is a bit of a queer one.' Nobody told him that she was hard up or that she acted as if she had come into some money recently.

'I suppose I could have been wrong about her but I think I will keep my eyes on her for couple more days and see what happens.'

He rang the station to say that he would not be in again that day and headed for home, stopping off at a pachinko parlor on the way.

Next day, however, he arrived at the station to find that the whole case had taken a new turn. Gyoro called out his name and came over to his desk, smiling.

For the people who hold a funeral, it is a very important event, the sending off of a loved one, but for the disinterested observer, they are all pretty similar. The black and white drapes, the smell of the incense and the sobbing of the women. Even the ceremony itself is very much the same.

That day it was the Ikeuchi funeral and if you tried to find something to make it stand apart from all the others, it would be the large number of school children attending. There were about forty of them milling about in the street outside with their military-like uniforms with stiff collars and brass buttons.

They lit the incense with unaccustomed hands and the confusion in their faces showed that they still could not accept the death of their friend. The schoolgirls were gathered together like a flock of frightened sheep and one was crying passionately, obviously the dead boy's girlfriend.

Kyoko Noguchi had still to make an appearance.

Gen and Gyoro stood to one side, near the hedge, Gen with his usual sleepy look and Gyoro glaring round him fiercely.

"Do you think she will come?"

"I don't see why not."

"So that wasn't her brother she was living with."

"No, that was only what she had told the neighbors."

"I suppose she paid his school fees and looked after him."

A man in a blue uniform picked his way through the crowd towards them. He was a bald, weak-looking man.

"I was told that I would be able to find you here," he said, bowing nervously.

"Oh, are you... err... the man from the... err... council?"

Gyoro was at a loss for words as to how to describe the man's job.

"Yes, that is correct."

"I will have to ask you one more time," Gyoro said, fixing the man with a fierce gaze.

"Yes?"

"Are you quite sure that you could not be mistaken?"

"Yes, I have been doing this job for a long time now. If it had been one of those young fellows that they have working there now, I don't know, it might never have come to light."

"I see."

"I didn't realize it myself, right away, it just struck me as being strange somehow."

"Oh?"

"When I took the body out of the incinerator, the bones were already beginning to crumble, but I could not help but feel that there was something strange about it."

"Very much like a detectives intuition."

"You see, there was this leg bone lying is the wrong place and the body's own legs were both lying where they were supposed to be."

"Yes, I see."

"It might have been my imagination, but the next body seemed to have too many hands and the one after that had lots of hip bones..."

Gyoro turned to Gen.

"You could hide a hand in a bunch of chrysanthemums and a giraffes neck bends, just like an arm. Now if you wanted to hide a leg..."

"How about a stuffed crocodile?"

"Yes, that would do nicely."

The bald man wiped the perspiration from his face.

"Well, anyway, I thought that it would be best if I were to get in touch with the police."

At that moment the woman walked briskly through the gate.

"And to think that I thought she was just knocking off the collections."

"Yes, her 'brother' might have been indebted to her, but he was not going to allow himself to be tied to her for the rest of his life. She must have realized what he planned and she was not going to stand by and watch him escape."

They were brought up short by a terrible cry of anguish and saw that while they had been talking preparations had been made to carry out the coffin. They saw the woman approaching the open coffin and hurried over to the verandah. She knelt next to the coffin, one hand over her eyes to hold back the tears.

"You were always a sportsman, and you will always remain one to me," she said in a subdued whisper.

Gyoro turned to the man in the blue uniform.

"You said that so far you have only had a hand, a foot and the hip bones, is that correct?"

"Yes."

As the bald man nodded, Kyoko leaned forward to place a slightly distorted rugby ball in the coffin.

__________________

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